Skip to main content

Diigo Home
Home/ XD3102 - Gender Studies/ Group items tagged Pornography

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Weiye Loh

The Absurd Myths Porn Teaches Us About Sex | | AlterNet - 0 views

www.alternet.org/...yths_porn_teaches_us_about_sex

Pornography Sexuality Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 08 Apr 12
     
    Young people who have learned about sex from watching porn have a treasure trove of sadly mistaken beliefs and misconceptions about sexuality.
Weiye Loh

In The Company Of Men - Anna Arrowsmith's Myths About Porn « Guardian Watch - 0 views

graunwatch.wordpress.com/...a-arrowsmiths-myths-about-porn

Pornography Gender Stereotype Gender Equality Heterosexuality Heteronormativity

shared by Weiye Loh on 22 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • The fact porn films sometimes require performances from men that can perceived to be misogynistic does not necessarily mean that the films, or the actors, are misogynistic themselves. In fact, most of the individuals involved are usually aware that they are putting on a performance that must be understood within friendly parentheses.’
  • even leaving aside for one moment the huge markets that include M/m porn, F/m ‘dominatrix’ porn and mixed-sex ‘gang bangs’ (which you cannot categorise as ‘gay’ or ‘straight’), heterosexual porn is often ALL ABOUT THE MEN. And, even taking it on its own, with men in dominant positions, the male stars are still the objects of the camera’s gaze. And other men look at them!
  • guys watch­ing porn today expect to see male per­form­ers who reflect their own met­ro­sex­ual pre­oc­cu­pa­tions. More than that, I think many young men expect that male porn actor’s bod­ies should give them visual plea­sure. (Deen com­plains that he gets hate mail from men – who fre­quently tell him he ‘needs to work out’.)
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • all male porn actors are ‘objects of desire’ and not just objects of desire, but objects of MEN’s desire.
Weiye Loh

Balderdash: Eroticism vs Pornography in Literature - 0 views

gssq.blogspot.com/...pornography-in-literature.html

Pornography Literature Erotica Sociology Gender

shared by Weiye Loh on 11 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • The sociological perspective defines eroticism as the pornography of the dominant social class. In this view, eroticism has aristocratic associations, while pornography is a lower-class activity. Thus, pornography but not eroticism may represent a threat to the status quo. Yet, as numerous entries demonstrate, the eroticism of ‘high literature’ is just as capable of subversion as more popular forms of writing about sex.
  • The gender of the author is another spurious yardstick, by which the pornography/eroticism distinction is sometimes measured. In this perspective, men produce pornography while women ‘write the erotic’. This argument falters when confronted with anonymity, or the extensive use of pseudonyms. Moreover, some authors employ strategies to make believe that the narrator is male or female, creating confusion as to the author’s sex or gender.
  • As for the familiar charge that this is a literature aimed only at the male voyeur, erotic texts frequently appeal to all of the senses, from the evocation of the sensation of bodily touch, taste and smells to the screams, whispers and silences that can accompany the sex-act. Such descriptions speak as much to women as to men.
Weiye Loh

Warning from Scottish Women Against Pornography - 'Hardcore' is Not A Documentary : wom... - 0 views

womensgrid.freecharity.org.uk/?p=7727

Pornography Film Ethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 10 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 10 Jul 11
     
    Hardcore, a film that purports to be a documentary about the porn industry, is to be screened in London on 18 July with the support of the feminist groups, UK Feminista and Object. Hardcore is not a documentary about the porn industry. It is a porn film posing as a documentary. Its aim is to titillate viewers and profit from the ordeal of a young woman, Felicity, whose abuse and rape are recorded in the film.
    About four years ago I agreed to take part in a panel discussion following a screening of Hardcore at the Glasgow Film Theatre. Also present were the film's director, Stephen Walker, and producer, Richard Sattin. They had allowed Felicity to be subjected to horrific male sexual violence. They did not come to her aid. Instead they manipulated her, portraying her as a naïve young woman, so disguising the cunning and duplicity employed by the porn industry to entrap the disadvantaged. Walker says that "he didn't want to replicate the prurient tourism of most porn documentaries." What he did is actually far worse. He and Sattin repeatedly ask us to feel sorry for them because of the pain they had to endure making Hardcore, but they show scant regard for Felicity's suffering. I asked them how they felt watching Max Hardcore, a violent porn actor notorious even in that callous industry, as he raped Felicity. Both men vehemently denied that Max Hardcore had raped Felicity, even though the audience at the screening of around a hundred people had just seen it with their own eyes. Elsewhere Walker has referred to this rape as an "unwillingly encounter." On the set Max Hardcore deliberately tries to choke Felicity during an oral sex scene. This is during a staged orgy which will include her first anal sex scene. Walker and his assistant were unable to face filming this so they abandoned Felicity to her fate and retreated to the safety of a restaurant to comfort themselves with a bottle of wine.
Weiye Loh

Is Pornography Driving Men Crazy? - Naomi Wolf - Project Syndicate - 0 views

www.project-syndicate.org/...English

Pornography Politician Addiction Polarisation

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • therapists and sexual counselors were anecdotally connecting the rise in pornography consumption among young men with an increase in impotence and premature ejaculation among the same population. These were healthy young men who had no organic or psychological pathology that would disrupt normal sexual function.

    The hypothesis among the experts was that pornography was progressively desensitizing these men sexually.

  • a great deal of data on the brain’s reward system has accumulated to explain this rewiring more concretely. We now know that porn delivers rewards to the male brain in the form of a short-term dopamine boost, which, for an hour or two afterwards, lifts men’s mood and makes them feel good in general. The neural circuitry is identical to that for other addictive triggers, such as gambling or cocaine.
  • Given the desensitization effect on most male subjects, researchers found that they quickly required higher levels of stimulation to achieve the same level of arousal.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • after the dopamine burst wears off, the consumer feels a letdown – irritable, anxious, and longing for the next fix. (There is some new evidence, uncovered by Jim Pfaus at Concordia University in Canada, that desensitization may be affecting women consumers of pornography as well.)
  • pornography tends to become more and more extreme over time: ordinary sexual images eventually lose their power, leading consumers to need images that break other taboos in other kinds of ways, in order to feel as good. Moreover, some men (and women) have a “dopamine hole” – their brains’ reward systems are less efficient – making them more likely to become addicted to more extreme porn more easily.
  • This is not to say that they are not responsible for their behavior. But I would argue that it is a different kind of responsibility: the responsibility to understand the powerfully addictive potential of pornography use, and to seek counseling and medication if the addiction starts to affect one’s spouse, family, professional life, or judgment.

  • Understanding how pornography affects the brain and wreaks havoc on male virility permits people to make better-informed choices – rather than engage in pointless self-loathing or reactive collective judgments – in a world that has become more and more addictively hardcore.

  • Weiye Loh on 30 Jun 11
     
    so many of the men caught up in sex-tinged scandals of late have exposed themselves - sometimes literally - through their own willing embrace of text messages, Twitter, and other indiscreet media.

    What is driving this weirdly disinhibited decision-making? Could the widespread availability and consumption of pornography in recent years actually be rewiring the male brain, affecting men's judgment about sex and causing them to have more difficulty controlling their impulses?
Weiye Loh

Hello, Kitty - Stryker responds to my 'female gaze' critique « Quiet Riot Girl - 0 views

quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/...nds-to-my-female-gaze-critique

Gaze Sexuality Pornography

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Jun 11 - No Cached

  • regardless of whether or not the theory fits that, people *are* buying it more and more, which would suggest there is a niche there that people don’t feel is being met elsewhere. How do you account for that?

    The world I live in, especially now, in Oakland, California, is definitely dominated by half-naked women. It’s on our TV screens (Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, Kardashians, America’s Next Top Model, Project Runway, Sopranos reruns, Mad Men- I think True Blood is really the one equal opportunity objectifier). It’s in our magazines and newspapers- looking in the back pages there’s maybe 1 ad with a male for every 20 with females. It’s on book covers at the publisher I work for. It’s in the popup ads my computer blocks. I’d be happy to do a photojournal for a week to show what I mean, if you need that. There’s the occasional sexualized Black male body, say, for an album release, where they look tough and angry- female album covers show them being available and seductive. Sure, there’s Bieber, and for every Bieber there’s a Miley, Jasmine, Taylor, Brittney, Christina, Jessica, etc.

  • almost all of the time, the camera is on the woman’s body, leaving a disembodied dick plowing into her. Male attractiveness in “heterosexual” porn isn’t seen as that important (starting to among some producers, mostly female ones, like Anna Span) but female attractiveness is compulsory. If, as a woman, you are not stereotypically attractive (slender, white, blonde, mildly or not tattooed, femme), you are far more likely to be humiliated, insulted, and treated roughly.
  • fancy dress, where women get multiple versions of “slutty fill in the blank”, and men get costumes that are scary or silly. If they wear something sexualized, fancy dress or underwear-wise, it will either be from a gay male shop or it’ll be a humorous novelty item. Men being sexy or seen naked (particularly if they’re heterosexual-identified) is often seen in media as hilarious.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • I’m guessing you equally argue that the male gaze doesn’t exist, right? Maybe I’m wrong but I haven’t seen you mention the male gaze at all really, except in passing. Almost all this debate and discussion seems to center around the female gaze. I’m all for a queer gaze, but no, I disagree that *all* people have it. Perhaps there’s ways in which a homoerotic gaze is more common, but it’s certainly still stigmatized.
Weiye Loh

Porn Addict or Selfish Bastard? Life Is More Complicated Than That « - 0 views

sexualintelligence.wordpress.com/...-is-more-complicated-than-that

Pornography Sexuality Gender Stereotype Gender Equality

shared by Weiye Loh on 08 May 11 - No Cached
  • In a different world, Mr. Porn Consumer would turn to Outraged Wife/Girlfriend and say “Wow, I can see that you’re really upset about what I’m watching. Let’s talk about it and see what we can do.” In the real world, however, most men are so loaded down with shame about their sexuality that the second their partner attacks them for watching porn, they collapse and allow their partner to seize control of the relationship.
  • I understand that some guys really have a problem with porn (I see these guys more than most therapists): some watch way too much, some have abandoned their partners emotionally, some think porn depicts real life
  • But most guys who watch porn just, well, watch porn. And of course they hide it from their partner—because they assume their partner will hit the roof if she finds out.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • While some women don’t, too many do. And these days they have a choice: they can decide their man is a selfish bastard, or they can give him the dignity of a medical problem—“porn addiction” (as a bonus, she acquires the dignity of suffering with a partner who’s ill.” A lot of guys like the disease option, too. If a wife claims that porn use is infidelity, if a girlfriend claims that porn use means he isn’t attracted to her, a disease is a good place to hide. It’s like a high school dropout being busted for car theft—and choosing to join the army instead of going to jail.
  • A lot of women insist that “as long as I’m sexually available to him, he has no reason to masturbate.” When pressed on this, they say he has no right—“he shouldn’t take his sexuality outside the relationship,” as if they’re jealous of his right hand.
  • If a woman has complaints about a guy’s behavior—he calls her the wrong name or daydreams during sex, never wants to talk about anything, checks his phone during dinner—those are legitimate grievances that need addressing. Couples therapy is a great place to do that. But if her complaint is simply that he uses porn, which she finds disgusting or confusing, that doesn’t give her the power to ban his hobby, or force him to defend it.

  • You can get a guy to promise to give up porn, and some guys actually will. You can even get a guy to promise to give up masturbating. A few actually will. The rest will do what they did when they were 14—they’ll do it in secret, feel bad about it, and hope they won’t get caught. And so a life of lying about sex continues. You can imagine what that will do to the couple’s closeness.

    Sadly, some women will continue to blame the porn, rather than examine how they’ve used coercion to undermine intimacy.

  • Weiye Loh on 08 May 11
     
    Wife/girlfriend somehow assumes that husband/boyfriend does not watch porn (guess that's what she means by "he's one in a million"). One day, his porn watching comes to her attention (he leaves something on the screen, she searches his website history, he gets an email or bill from some friendly porn site, etc.).

    She freaks.

    She decides what his porn watching "means":
    * He doesn't care for her
    * He's been faking sexual desire or enjoyment
    * He'd rather be with other women (or men, or kangaroos, or whatever he's been watching)
    * He's a pervert
    * He's unfaithful

    Needless to say, these interpretations make his porn watching her business. And frequently, she decides she has the moral high ground from which to dictate what his problem is, the fact that he must get it fixed, and what the treatment needs to be. With slight variations, a new version of this case walks into my office almost every week.
Weiye Loh

Fascinating Facts About Internet Sex - 0 views

jezebel.com/#!5794158/fascinating-facts-about-internet-sex

Pornography Stereotype Gender Stereotype

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • Rather than using these facts to make sweeping statements about the difference between men and women, it's more useful to recognize that a lot of the generalizations people make about desire, especially male desire, just aren't true. At least in private, not all straight men are looking for thin, young ciswomen — or even for ciswomen at all. And what Internet porn can teach us is that while there may be some differences in sexual preferences between genders, there's enormous variation within them.
  • Weiye Loh on 29 Apr 11
     
    Rather than using these facts to make sweeping statements about the difference between men and women, it's more useful to recognize that a lot of the generalizations people make about desire, especially male desire, just aren't true. At least in private, not all straight men are looking for thin, young ciswomen - or even for ciswomen at all. And what Internet porn can teach us is that while there may be some differences in sexual preferences between genders, there's enormous variation within them.
1 - 8 of 8
Showing 20▼ items per page
Move to top